Vron detested idleness. He fidgeted with his sword, tossing it back and forth between jabs and slashes. He had no one to fight.
The other orcs were busy rifling through the city for supplies. They'd decided the ground had been still for long enough. Perhaps the xarlug was an anomaly; perhaps they were wasting time remaining in the prairie. So back into the city they went, ready to recover what they could and rebuild the rest.
But Vron remained in the camp during the day, keeping his body busy and preparing for another battle. Alyna said it wasn't over, that the xarlug was only the beginning. Vron trusted her, so he did as she suggested.
His muscles ached as he swung his sword, chopping at an invisible enemy. He dropped his sword and rubbed his right bicep. Everyone he might have talked to had left. Alyna. Tace. Even that human, Brax. Vron begrudgingly admitted he liked the man. But it was Tace he particularly wanted to speak with.
After he'd told her that he was her older brother, she had denied him. I don't have a brother. And she'd left the next morning with the two humans for the Library of Filamir, disappearing from Vron's life once more.
When he first ran into her, during the battle with the xarlug, he had realized immediately who she was. Since then, he'd wanted nothing more than to get to know her—to explain what had happened to him after he'd left her and their mother, to tell her how he had created a new life for himself in a new city. The same city his mother and sister eventually settled in, too. They had been destined to come together again as a family, he believed.
Maybe, once Doros was safe, they could speak of the past.
"Vron!" The shout drew him from his thoughts. An orc waved at him in the distance.
Vron sheathed his sword on his back and took off at a run. "What is it?" he called back.
"We've found something, and Dalgron insisted you come." The young orc, Marlok, stood with his arms crossed over his chest, tapping his foot. He wasn't known for his patience. He had a lot to learn.
“Then let’s go.”
Vron followed Marlok, remaining close on his heels.
The iron gates of Agitar hung crooked and mangled where the xarlug had emerged. Once they had been a shining beacon, a symbol of the most powerful orc city. Now they looked as if they'd been neglected for hundreds of years. Dalgron waited in front of them, and Marlok led Vron to his side.
"General. What is it?" Vron asked between breaths.
The older orc's brows furrowed, his mouth set in a grimace. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Vron insisted, silently reprimanding himself for working himself too hard. "Why did you need me?"
"Come, I have to show you something."
Dalgron climbed over the ruined city gates. Stepping carefully on the streets strewn with rubble, he led Vron and Marlok to the ruins of a house, where he disappeared through a dark doorway. Vron followed him in, as Marlok stood guard outside the door.
Dalgron grabbed a lit torch from an iron stand. "We were searching this house for food when Marlok heard a strange noise."
Vron clenched his teeth. "The xarlug?"
"No." Dalgron's mouth turned down in the flickering light. "A child’s muffled screaming for help. We lifted all the rugs and found a trapdoor in the floor. It was a crude tunnel that led to the mines." He reached down and pulled up a metal handle.
"We're headed down?" Vron hadn’t been in the mines before. As a warrior, he'd spent his days aboveground, often forgetting that a large part of the population of Agitar worked underground, mining coal, ore, and precious gems.
Dalgron raised an eyebrow. "You're not claustrophobic, are you?"
"I guess I'll find out." Vron squared his shoulders and descended into the tunnel.
A fetid smell wafted to Vron's nostrils, and he nearly retched. He swallowed his disgust. "What is that?"
"It's the dead," Dalgron answered without looking back. He continued to press deeper into the tunnel.
Vron eyed the crudely excavated walls with suspicion. Nothing felt right. Not the tunnel. Not the smell. This wasn't the smell of blood or death—it was the putrid stench of decay, which he knew well from the battlefield. He flung his arm over his mouth and nose in a desperate attempt to block the smell. Dalgron continued onward as if he smelled nothing.
Before long, the tunnel opened into a wide chasm. Bodies upon bodies lay stacked in rows. There had to be hundreds, perhaps even thousands.
"Where did they all come from?" Vron asked in disbelief.
"They are the miners who lived underground. We feared many of them would be dead after the xarlug attack, assuming the beast used our mining tunnels to travel. We found one miner who was willing to talk to us. He said orcs had been dying for days before the attack, and they'd been using this passageway as their crypt. They saw no reason to inform anyone since the king had abdicated and the city was in chaos." Dalgron ventured closer to one stack of bodies. "Come here, Vron."
Vron stepped closer to the dead. He was unsure what Dalgron wanted him to see, until the light of Dalgron's torch fell fully on the piles.
"By Drothu, they are covered in black boils!" Vron stumbled backward, grabbing Dalgron and pulling him away. "It is a infection."
"We assumed as much, too." Dalgron gestured for Vron to follow as he headed back up the crude tunnel. "We've decided to seal off all entrances to the mines."
"Have you evacuated the living?" Vron asked. He was dumbfounded that there had been an outbreak underground and no one had bothered notifying them aboveground.
Dalgron stopped and turned, his stony eyes meeting Vron's. "The living will soon die. They were exposed. Evacuating them will only harm the rest of us."
"Why did you bring me down here?" Vron asked, suddenly weak on his feet. His exhaustion coupled with this revelation, threatened to bring him to his knees.
"I need you to enforce the order. You are my greatest warrior. The others will listen to you. I needed you to see and understand what we are dealing with." He stepped closer, his nose almost touching Vron's. "We've already suffered so much loss of life from the xarlug attack. Our city has been destroyed. Our orcs need to seek refuge in other cities in Doros. If word gets out that we also harbor sickness, we will be shunned. Our orcs will be left to live off the prairie. You know we cannot sustain ourselves out there."
"What if there's a cure? I can ask Alyna—"
"Your faun has left us, Vron. Can you reach her quickly? Do you even know where she lives?"
Vron opened his mouth, then quickly shut it. He didn't. Alyna had never shared the exact location of her home with him.
"We have no choice, then. We will work to close all entrances to the mines. You will supervise the work, and you will tell them you personally toured the mines and no one is left alive. Do you understand?"
Vron swallowed his protests. Lying was something he abhorred. Still, he knew Dalgron was right. If they allowed the miners to bring the sickness aboveground, they ran the risk of killing everyone who'd managed to survive the xarlug attack.
"I understand," Vron said, regretting the words even as he spoke them.